UMass nurses' union: 'It was well worth the fight'

Union members tend to stick together, fighting corporations as a team.

But contract negotiations between UMass Memorial Medical Center and its nurses, which ended just before midnight Wednesday, also highlighted differences between members of the same union.

The hospital's 2,000 nurses are represented by two different bargaining units, both affiliated with the Massachusetts Nurses Association. Not satisfied with the hospital's contract offers, nurses at both units threatened to hold a one-day strike.

One unit, representing more than 900 nurses at the hospital's Memorial and Hahnemann campuses, withdrew the strike threat last week after agreeing to a contract. The bargaining team from University Campus rejected the deal.

Both teams had the same goal — to limit the number of patients assigned to nurses during a shift.

But ultimately, they diverged on their definition of safe staffing and what they were willing to give up to get it.

The possibility of a nurses' strike at University Campus did not end until six hours before the scheduled walkout.

“We prevailed,” nurse Ellen Smith of the bargaining team told her colleagues after settling the deal Wednesday night. “It was well worth the fight.

“It wasn't about the money,” she added. “It was about the staffing. We'll get the money in the next contract.”

University Campus will get most of the 80 full-time equivalent nurses that UMass Memorial promised to hire, according to union officials. But nurses there will get smaller raises: 1 percent a year for 3 years. At Memorial Campus, nurses will get raises of 1.5 percent in the second year of the contract and 2 percent in the third.

“Ideally, we were hoping to do the contracts together, but looking at it now, our campus is much different than Memorial. We have a higher acuity,” said Margaret McLoughlin, chairwoman of the University Campus bargaining team. “We held out for what was best for our campus. They did what they thought was best for theirs.”

The 781-bed UMass Memorial Medical Center has its trauma center and pediatrics unit and holds most complex surgeries at University Campus. Memorial houses the neonatal intensive care unit, maternity ward and orthopedics. Both campuses offer cancer treatments. Hahnemann is an outpatient campus.

Some of the University Campus nurses who gathered at Coral Seafood for a rally Wednesday night expressed disappointment that Memorial Campus settled for less-than-ideal staffing.

“Memorial sold us out,” said Lyn Flagg, a University Campus nurse who followed the bargaining sessions closely. “Memorial took a lesser deal than we would have taken. We stood strong in asking for safe staffing.”

Lynne Starbard, a nurse on the Memorial Campus bargaining team, said she was under pressure to avoid a strike; otherwise, infants in neonatal care would have been moved to other hospitals.

“I don't think holding out any further would have helped too much,” she said. “Would we have liked better numbers? Of course we would. Our contract runs till 2015, and at that time we will work on it further.”

The contracts, which still must be approved by the unions' members, also settled disagreements on pensions and vacation time.

“The thing with collective bargaining,” said Gary N. Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University, “is that no one wins entirely. Everyone wins a little.

“Essentially, what the nurses did is they threatened to strike, and they got noticed, and they got to the changes they wanted.”

Though the strike never happened, its effects were felt at the hospital. UMass Memorial moved some patients out of University Campus this week and rescheduled many surgeries.

The hospital also spent $4 million to hire replacement nurses to work in case of a strike. It declined to detail other costs of strike preparation. A hospital spokesman said UMass Memorial does not have strike insurance.

“Any costs associated with preparations for a potential strike were necessary to ensure that we would continue to provide safe, high-quality care,” said spokesman Rob Brogna.

After reaching agreement with nurses late Wednesday night, which followed 10 hours of negotiations, Dr. Eric W. Dickson, president and chief executive officer of UMass Memorial Health Care, said the contract meets the goals of the nurses and the hospital and was in the best interest of patients.